Bardach is best known for her work on Cuba and Miami and was called "the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami", by the Columbia Journalism Review, having interviewed dozens of key players including Fidel Castro,[1] sister Juanita Castro, anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, CIA and Watergate plumber E. Howard Hunt,[2] anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch and CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was present for the assassination of Che Guevara.

She has appeared on numerous television programs including 60 Minutes, Today, Good Morning America, Dateline NBC, CNN, The O'Reilly Factor, Charlie Rose and has been frequently heard on NPR and the BBC.

[6] Starting out as a freelance crime reporter in New York City in the late 1970s, she lucked out by being at the Bellevue Morgue the week that the body of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious' girlfriend, Nancy Spungen arrived DOA.

Bardach chronicled the New York punk scene in the late 1970s-80s, conducting numerous interviews with musicians and personages from Debbie Harry of Blondie (in the New York Times Magazine),[7] The Sex Pistols, artist Winston Tong, filmmaker Kenneth Anger, poet Jim Carroll, Klaus Nomi, the punk opera singer, etc.

Bardach started the international journalism class at University of California, Santa Barbara (USCB) and is on the board of PEN USA and UCSB's Carsey-Wolf Center for Film, Television and New Media.